The Florida Trib

06/23/2026

The Fenholloway River is at a crossroads.

State regulators are paving the way for wastewater to flow back into what was once Florida's most polluted river - over the objections of Taylor County residents.

At the request of a company owned by one of America’s wealthiest families, state regulators are paving the way for wastewater to flow back into the Fenholloway River

06/17/2026

Ethics complaints against five Florida sheriffs have been dismissed – although none were actually investigated on the merits. The Florida Trib filed a public records request seeking copies of the complaints against the sheriffs and received more than 100 pages. Included were the complaints themselves and detailed explanations for why they did not merit investigation.

You can read them here.

The allegations were rejected either for lack of legal sufficiency or “personal knowledge” by the plaintiffs, the Florida Commission on Ethics reported in a lengthy press release — a dump of 110 ethics cases involving officials from across the state.

06/12/2026

Florida’s largest school district – Miami-Dade – has attracted scant interest from candidates for its Aug. 18 school board election, potentially guaranteeing reelection for three of the four incumbents whose terms are up.

At a pivotal moment for the district, only one of Miami-Dade's four incumbent school board members faces a challenger so far

06/11/2026

Florida's Supreme Court rejected an emergency petition by civil rights advocates to halt implementation of the state’s newly redrawn congressional district map, which could give Florida Republicans the chance to cut Democratic representation in half.

A ruling Wednesday by the Florida Supreme Court ensures that DeSantis' Republican-friendly congressional map will remain in effect in the 2026 midterms

06/03/2026

Throughout Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tenure, Florida’s Republican leaders have spent years, and many millions of taxpayer dollars, injecting conservative politics into the state’s top-ranked university system.

There is almost no facet of campus life this sea change has left untouched, according to interviews with more than a dozen faculty, staff and education officials across the state, as well as a review of budgets, internal university communications and policy documents.

These changes have quieted private conversations among professors, altered allowable speech at public forums, invited conservative think tanks and policy analysts to influence and sit on key governing boards, and eliminated courses that were once non-controversial.

The task of finding university and college presidents – once an academic exercise – is now a secretive, thorny project closely linked to Republican politics

05/29/2026

South of Lake Okeechobee, just beyond 400,000 acres of sugar fields, lie the Everglades’ last line of defense against the phosphorus pollution that is slowly smothering the River of Grass.

They’re an odd blend of nature and engineering: 64,000 acres of manmade marshes called stormwater treatment areas (STAs). They're a key piece of Florida’s plan to restore the Everglades, but the STAs aren’t on track to comply with clean water rules.

Flunking water quality standards means higher chances of noxious, toxic algae blooms along the coasts

05/18/2026

The initial installment of the long-awaited $608 million federal reimbursement for “Alligator Alcatraz” is expected to hit the state of Florida’s bank account in a matter of days, according to correspondence obtained by The Florida Trib.

The amount is a fraction of what Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has spent to build the sprawling tent-and-trailer compound at a remote airstrip in the Florida Everglades

05/16/2026

Being on a Brady List does not preclude an officer from serving or testifying. It only requires that his or her background be disclosed to the judge and the defense.

That can affect the outcome of a case, giving leverage to the defense and prompting prosecutors to agree to reduced charges, especially when the officer’s testimony is central.

When you’ve finished watching this explainer by reporter Trinity Webster-Bass, go to floridatrib.org to read the story.

05/14/2026

The search to find out who was behind the mysterious South Florida Standard, which The Florida Trib undertook in partnership with the media and tech podcast Question Everything, also shows how easy it is for the real people behind these digital doppelgangers to remain in the shadows – evidence of the staggering capabilities of AI and the threat it can pose to an unsuspecting public in a damaged democracy.

The search to find out who was behind the South Florida Standard shows how easy it is for the real people behind digital doppelgangers to remain in the shadows

05/12/2026

The Brady List maintained by the Fourth Circuit, based in Jacksonville, includes the names of 89 officers across Duval, Clay, and Nassau counties. Most have long since resigned or been fired. Many are in prison. Only two officers on the Brady List remain employed – one by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, according to JSO, and the other by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

In collaboration with MuckRock.

Florida law does not explicitly require prosecutorial agencies to keep a Brady List – as evidenced by the fact that several don’t.